Assault on Paradise: Social Change in a Brazilian Village

This is a revision of a highly readable, instructive, and entertaining ethnography for use as a supplemental text in introductory anthropology courses. The text chronicles the rapid social and economic change in Arembepe, a Brazilian coastal fishing village, where the author conducted anthropological fieldwork from 1962 to the present. This revision brings his research up to date with events that have occurred in this community in the 1990's, focusing primarily on the impact of modernization, technology and mass media. This ethnography can be used on its own, or in conjunction with any introductory anthropology text, but works particularly well with, Mirror for Humanity, 2/e (1999) also by Conrad Kottak. The coinciding publication of these two books offers professors the chance to give their students a brief text by a leading anthropologist, along with his most successful ethnography.